The One Where Tony Tries To Be A 'Normal' Guy
by AndiFO
Summary: Pepper gets a phone call in the middle of the night from Tony asking her to him pick up him after he tries to be a 'normal' guy.


Disclaimer: I don't own or have anything to do with the Iron Man franchise (unfortunately) and I am making no profit out of this. All in good fun :)

A/N: I wrote this a few months back, I think while watching the World Series last year, which is where I kind of got the spark for the idea of this story. I've had it sitting in my documents for a while now and after re-reading it a few dozen times I thought I may as well post it and see if anybody else enjoys it. All reviews are always welcome of course :D.....also if anyone is reading my other story 'Best Mistake' don't worry I will be updating it. After a few long months school is out and I have to time to continue it.

Hope you guys enjoy...No Beta so all mistakes are by me.

It was two o'clock in the morning. After a long day at work making phone calls, writing e-mails, and dealing with the likes of some of the cockiest men in business-not excluding her boss-all Pepper wanted to do was sleep. And that is in fact what she had been doing, until the incessant ringing of her cell phone became too much to continue to ignore.

She took the pillow she'd been using to cover her ears off her head and turned over, rolling to the side of the bed where her phone lay. She reached for it, quickly looking at the caller id before swiftly opening it to stop the ringing.

"Hello?"

"Pepper," came a husky voice on the other side.

"Tony?"

"Yeah, it's me-"

"Do you know what time it is?" she cut him off.

"I know, I'm sorry, but I need you to do me a favor."

"Mmm what?" She asked sleepily.

"I need you to come pick me up…please."

She immediately sat up in bed and turned on the lamp on the night stand beside her. She grabbed the clock on the table and turned it towards her .

"Tony, its 2:37 in the morning, where are you? And why do you need me to pick you up?"

"Look, I'll be around the intersection of 37th avenue and 8th street. Just come, I'll explain everything when you get here."

He hung up before she had a chance to protest. She looked at the phone in confusion and wondered for a split second if maybe she was still dreaming. Why did he need her to pick him up? And what, for the love of God, was he doing on the intersection of 37th and 8th? That wasn't exactly known as being the friendliest part of town, in fact it was far from it.

Ignoring the questions roaming through her head about her boss's odd request, she got out of bed and got ready to pick him up.

Driving to where Tony was, Pepper realized that she barely recognized that part of the city. Everything was dark. There weren't many stores or businesses, so the minimal amount of lighting that came through was from the occasional light post overhead. It appeared to her that it was one of the older parts of the cities.

As she approached the address that Tony had told her, she momentarily panicked when she couldn't find him, or even anything at that spot. She drove a little further, and was finally able to find him walking calmly down the sidewalk about a block from where he'd told her to meet him.

She stopped her car next to him and he quickly got in without saying a word.

"Tony, what were you doing here?" She said as she sped up again.

"I got into a fight."

"You got into a what?!" she turned on the light inside the car and turned to find her boss staring at her, a dark bruise already forming over his left eye, a cut on his left cheek and blood drying on what appeared to be a split lip.

"Where exactly did you get in a fight at? And why don't you have your car with you?"

"It was at a bar, and I do have my car with me, see?" He proved this to her by pulling his car keys out of his pocket and dangling them for her to see.

"Ok, so if you have you car keys why did you need me to pick you up?"

"I can't get to my car." They reached a stop light and she turned to look at him, an 'are you serious?' look on her face, but he didn't volunteer anymore information.

"Tony, I'm going to need for you to elaborate a little more on why I've had to come pick you up at almost three in the morning to find you walking by yourself in the night with a black eye."

He sighed and threw his head back against the seat, getting ready to tell her the story.

"I was bored at home. I'd finished working on a new upgrade for the suit and so I went upstairs and turned on the TV while I started to make myself a sandwich."

"Wow" she said with a smirk. She eyed him from the corner of his eye and saw that he didn't look very amused.

"I'm _sorry_, do you want to hear this or not?"

"No, no, continue. I was just saying…"

"Anyways, they were showing some people celebrating at a bar after some team won a championship, and I thought to myself 'hey I've never just gone to a bar like a normal guy before, why don't I do that?'"

"Tony, you can't just go to a public place like that, people will recognize you, you're a public figure."

"I know which is why I dressed like this." She looked at him again and for the first time she saw that he was wearing jeans with a baggy hoodie and a baseball cap, something that though _she_ was used to seeing him in at home, she knew he didn't ever wear in public. He usually wore some type of suit at the office, or a party, or for a press conference, but never casually in jeans and a hoodie.

"Ok." She told him, "so I guess things didn't go so well then?" He shook his head.

"Everything was going fine at first. I was just having a few drinks, playing some pool, meeting some guys you know, talking. I thought it was a successful outing overall, this girl even started flirting with me."

"Uh huh" They arrived at the mansion and she parked the car outside. They got out and she noticed as they were walking in that he had one arm wrapped around his abdomen, so she suggested to him that she take him to a hospital because he may have broken a rib.

"No, I'm fine, they're probably just bruised, besides there's nothing I can't do here that they won't do there."

"Fine, come on." She walked in and headed straight for the kitchen while he waited by the stairs. Too many times she'd had to bandage him up after he came home from a mission, so she knew the process well enough already. She also knew that pushing the subject of going to the hospital wouldn't get her anywhere. After a few minutes she finally came back out with a zip lock bag filled with ice and a towel wrapped around it.

"Here put this on your eye to reduce the swelling." She said as she shoved the bag into his hand. He quickly put it over his left eye and started following her again as she walked past him.

"Anyways as I was saying" He spoke as they began to walk up the stairs to his room. "We were having a good time, talking, flirting, the whole shebang. She was pretty hot you know."

"Right." They walked into his bedroom and she immediately headed towards the bathroom to look for the first aid kit. He followed close behind.

"It was perfect, until this guy came up to us claiming that she was his girlfriend telling me I needed to get my 'sissy hands off her'" She rolled her eyes and told him to sit on the counter so she could clean the wounds on his face. He did as she told him and took the ice off, moving his face up so that she could see better with the light.

"Of course I don't listen to him. I mean who is this guy? I try to ignore him and turn back to the girl, but he starts threatening me, pretending to be all tough, and here I'm thinking 'no problem, I beat up guys like this on a regular bases-'"

"In the suit."

"…yeah in the suit."

"But you weren't in the suit."

"No…I wasn't."

"So you didn't beat him up."

"Obviously. Ah that stings" he pulled away as she dabbed some alcohol over the wound.

"Hold still, I'm trying to clean this cut on your cheek, you don't want it to get infected do you?"

"No, but you don't have to be so rough. Ow!"

"Oh you're such a baby, its just Neosporin; you act like I don't do this almost on a weekly basis."

"Yeah, but that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt on a weekly basis."

"Well maybe you shouldn't go about getting hurt so often then." She said as she put a band aid over the cut.

"Fine I won't, now will you let me finish the story?"

"Go right ahead, but take your shirt off first so that I can take a look at your ribs."

"Ooh, trying to get me naked now huh?"

"Tony…"

" Ok, ok, now listen. The guy had recognized me immediately. Knew who I as. Started calling out 'Iron Man, Tony Stark', taunting me."

"Testing your ego, and of course you just had to push back."

"No…I didn't…at first. I tried to stay calm, thinking about how you wouldn't enjoy having to deal with all the press calling the next morning, I could see the headline 'Billionaire Super Hero Tony Stark beaten up at local bar', but this guy wasn't letting up and I couldn't very well just leave so eventually I did, I took a swing at him. Next thing I know, I'm on the floor and there's a full blown bar brawl going on all around me. It didn't occur to me until after about the second fist I saw coming towards my face that I didn't have the same leverage without the suit."

"Oh Tony, are you sure you don't want to go to the hospital? You could have broken something, your ribs look awful." She looked at them closely, his skin had turned a light purple color around them and she could feel the tenderness underneath as she pressed a gentle finger to them.

"No" he hissed, "just bandage them up."

"Fine….why were you at _that _bar though."

"It was the one the showed on the news."

"And you just _had_ to go through with you plan _exactly_ as you envisioned it."

"Of course." he smiled down at her, the same mischievous smile he always gave her when he knew he had done something she didn't quite approve of.

She shook her head, "Mr. Stark, you never cease to surprise me." He laughed.

"Ok, well, things didn't turn out too bad actually, but my car wasn't so lucky"

"What did they do to your car?" she asked as she grabbed the bandages from under the sink.

"Well I had managed to get out from under the pile of people on top of me after the fight broke off, but by then the owner started kicking everybody out, so they followed me outside. Bastards, I was almost to my car too, but they caught up to me and upon seeing what I was driving, they surrounded me and slashed the tires!"

"They had a knife on them?"

"One of them did."

"Oh God Tony, you could have been seriously hurt, you could have been killed!"

"I know, I know, which is why I ran. I could still hear them yelling a few blocks away so I just kept going and then I called you. Pretty pathetic."

"Not pathetic Tony, but you have to remember that you're not always a superhero and you're definitely not going to always win those fights. Also I don't think you should go back to those bars by yourself anymore…or with anyone for that matter, you've got too many enemies with your status."

"Yeah, yeah, I know. I was just trying for that 'normal guy' act for once, just…wanted to know what it was like, you know?" He met her eyes, this time a smile wasn't accompanied with it. His face looked serious, sincere, with a sense of longing for something that he never thought he'd even want. She'd never thought before about how much his life lacked real normality, she was so used just sticking by him, watching him seduce the world with his charm and his brains, that she never realized that maybe he wanted something different.

She nodded her head and looked away, unsure of how else to help him at that moment. She finished the bandaging and started putting everything away while he put his shirt back on slowly over his head.

"Next time you want to be a 'normal' guy why don't you just take a stroll to an electronics store or something, I'm pretty sure most 'normal' guys are into that." His mood picked up again, seemingly amused by her suggestion.

"An electronics store? Are you kidding me? Why would I waste my time with that when I've got the world's most advanced technology sitting in my shop downstairs?"

"Tony, I've seen the things you have around your house and I'm pretty sure you didn't invent most of them."

"Fine, an electronic store, I'll think about that next time."

"Good"

She finished cleaning everything up and turned to find him leaning against the sink watching her.

"Well I better get going if there's nothing else." She said as she crossed the door to his bedroom.

"Ok, I guess I'll see you later on today then. Don't worry about coming in late."

"Gee thanks." She grabbed her purse from the top of his bed and started walking towards the door, but he stopped her mid-step.

"Hey Pepper."

"Yes?" She asked as she turned and found him standing outside his bathroom door.

"Thanks for tonight."

"You're welcome, Tony." She answered giving him a warm smile

"…And uh, how about we keep this between us for now, huh?" At this she couldn't help but out laugh.

"I'll do that."


End file.
